All You Need Is…

Love. The Beatles sang about it more than 40 years ago, and their message is never more important than today, during this time of a Great Shift in human consciousness. Love that is about universal sister/brotherhood. Love that links all beings in oneness, in unity consciousness. Love that connects us through the heart to something greater than our individual lives. This is the love that hundreds of poets and musicians have written of. Bob Marley sang about it in “One Love, One Heart,” and his son Ziggy carried it forward with “Love Is My Religion.” Tracy Chapman expressed it in “Heaven’s Here on Earth.

Love is the one value that seems to run through all cultures, countries, and religions. Many spiritual leaders and ordinary people have lived their lives in its service. Yet the world has remained divided by wars, violence, and hatred. Why have we failed as a species to hold to this value that we claim to believe in? Perhaps we had to live the extremes of human behavior in order to find our way back home. Perhaps we are evolving, finally, as a people and as a planet, to the point of irrevocably embracing the fact that love is the only real solution. Perhaps the veils are falling away at last so that when we look in one another’s eyes, we see our own reflection.

The truth is we are love at our very core. Layers of life’s hard knocks may have covered it completely, but it’s still present. As we move through the ongoing vibrational shifts on planet Earth, those layers will be peeled away or will fall away on their own. As we face monumental changes and challenges, we will be stripped down to our essence. We will reach out to our fellow beings for comfort, for reassurance; we will reach out in celebration, in joy. We will link arms and hearts in recognition that love is, and always has been, the universal truth of our lives here on Earth. It is why we came here—to embody human love and divine love simultaneously. It is why we are living the extremes of this time of radical change…so that we can finally stand together as one world united in love.

The next generations, too, are being born with the greater truth of love strong within them. Click on this link to see a wonderful children-produced video, “One World, One Heart Beating”: http://youtu.be/kY9HieCkT9c

Playing for Change

Earlier this month, I attended an outstanding concert given by the band Playing for Change. The original Playing for Change was a unique musical gathering, via technology, of individuals all over the world, each simultaneously singing or playing the same song and listening through headphones to the others. Some were street musicians, and all were recorded outdoors. The combined blending of voices, instruments, and diverse cultures was very moving, especially given the lyrics to the song used: “Stand by Me.” This extraordinary musical event was captured in a documentary film and also became famous globally on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us-TVg40ExM).

After that first long-distance collaboration, Playing for Change recorded other songs with some of the same and also different musicians. The Playing for Change band formed and began to tour the world, often performing benefits to raise funds to build music and art schools in communities that need “inspiration and hope.” They believe that music is a universal language that can unite people from different backgrounds. The group of musicians I saw in concert included two from the original recording, Clarence Bekker from Amsterdam and Grandpa Elliott from New Orleans, as well as others from Africa and the U.S. The musicianship was excellent, the songs diverse and powerful, and the performances literally vibrated with high energy. The entire audience was on their feet singing and dancing for the last few numbers.

Throughout two nonstop hours of music, the message of “playing for change” was conveyed, both in the lyrics and in the musicians’ introductions to songs. The double meaning of the name, Playing for Change, of course, refers both to their commitment to “bringing peace to the world through music” and to musicians who perform their music on street corners or in subways. I’ve always been struck by the power of that name and of the multiple implications for global transformation through music, through play.

The current “Occupy” movement incorporates both of these in flash mob events where large groups perform well-known popular songs, such as Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” and the classic disco tune “I Will Survive,” with cleverly changed lyrics to bring home a message about workers’ rights, economic equality, or social justice. Because the dancing and singing are both playful and hilarious, onlookers often laugh and sing along. Humor and music are both great connectors.

I also think of the larger meaning of playing for change—how we all live our lives, day to day. Are we open to change? Do we make time for play? Do we allow music to open our hearts with compassion and joy? Every time I hear “Stand by Me,” I feel a surge of hope for the world, for the possibility that we can all join hands across cultures, countries, and ideological differences to live a future based in unity and mutual understanding. It feels like an anthem for the times. (Listen at the link above.) I am grateful to groups like Playing for Change who so eloquently and tirelessly bring this message to people everywhere.

Visit the Playing for Change website to learn about them and to hear other wonderful songs: http://playingforchange.com/.

Meditation 24/7

When I was first learning to meditate many years ago at the Insight Meditation Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I discovered that the teachings included not only meditation while sitting in a chair or on a cushion but also while walking. It was my first exposure to the idea of meditation off the cushion or mat and out in the world. I took to it immediately. In fact, within my own experience, I widened the idea of walking meditation to include bird watching, which was/is my year-round passion. I found that the focused attention and slow silent walking that were a part of looking for and at birds were very similar to the focus on each breath and each step in walking meditation. Both activities fostered full presence in the moment. Every time I spent a morning or afternoon watching birds, I always felt very much in a meditative state.

This approach to meditation has remained with me through the years. I do consistently continue to meditate indoors while seated, but I also find that “meditation” defines my prevailing state of mind whenever I am outdoors in nature. This is particularly true since I have become a backyard gardener in the past few years. When I am planting or transplanting flowers, my hands in the earth, or just standing quietly watching everything grow, my mind has slowed its busyness, and my thought waves are peaceful, unhurried. I am centered in the present moment and feel one with the flow of life all around me as it slowly grows and moves into flowering. I see myself as part of that flow, that flowering. It is a comforting, inclusive feeling.

For me, then, meditation has become more than a singular activity or practice. It is a way of being in the world that I remind myself of on a daily basis. Just as I focus on the movement of each living breath in the present while in seated meditation, I can take deep breaths to inhale and exhale with gratitude for each moment no matter where I am or what I’m doing. It is all the same practice really. I would guess that most meditators (and yoga practitioners) experience a similar inner and outer connection.

To Do or to Be?

Recently, a friend and I were talking about how to handle the polarity between doing and being that many of us carry inside of us. We’ve been raised in a culture that emphasizes effort, trying, achievement, and success in material terms. The work ethic and the drive to constantly do pervade our society. On the job, unpaid overtime has become routine, and low-paying positions often force people to work at two jobs to make ends meet. Multi-tasking, email, and social media fill up all our “free” time, and friends and family are seen on the fly.

Even outside of mainstream culture, among those who are seeking to change the status quo to something more humane and truly livable, there is a certain push to be active, busy, involved in something. During the current period of major Earth changes, people’s experience of accelerating time also contributes to the frenetic need to keep moving—just to keep up with the hours that are rushing by!

Yet cracks in this compulsive busyness are appearing—possibly because we have run ourselves to the wall with the 24/7 modality. People are turning to things like meditation and yoga because they are quite literally burned out. Often their bodies stop them before their minds do. Headaches, injuries, and dis-ease of all kinds pop up in our lives to show us that all is not well. We are forced to slow down and find a way back to health. When we stop filling our lives with events and activities and instead focus on self-healing, doing takes a backseat to being and allowing.

Regular meditation or yoga practice helps individuals make this mental shift. The breath is of prime importance in both. Students learn to allow the breath to flow in and out without effort, without holding. In some traditions, they learn to watch the breath and just be in the quiet inner stillness. Eventually, with practice, people learn to carry that letting go to their daily lives, allowing events and emotions to pass through them without judgment or clutching, just as the breath does. Doing in this context arises from the quiet, centered space of being, not from polarized trying or effort.

The key, of course, is reaching that balance in a world that is skewed to emphasize just the opposite. But that’s why we’re here. The world is evolving, and we are evolving. We’re living the transition, learning how to embody the new human BE-ing, how to be conscious spirit in physical form, effortlessly flowing with the energy of life.

 

2012 and Beyond: Radio Interview

On January 31, 2012, I was interviewed by Peter, Barb, and Ric on the Spiritual HelpDesk online radio show. We talked about the energies of 2012 and beyond and how the Great Shift is affecting all of our lives. I also read an excerpt about my trip to Guatemala with the Maya elders from my book Living with Spirit, Journey of a Flower Child. The program is available for listening at this link: http://spiritualhelpdesk.com/2012/01/23/peggy-kornegger/.